Marine biologist Dr. Barry Wilson last year spent time at Turtle Reef in Talbot Bay, on advice from One Arm Points Bardi-Jawi people.

Dr. Wilson says there is greater diversity of coral species in Kimberley reefs than in oceanic atolls or the Great Barrier Reef.

There have been 318 species of corals recorded now on the Kimberley coast, he says.

Researchers in the late 1940s said the Kimberley had a profusion of ordinary fringing reefs.

Dr. Wilson says they were right about the profusion of Kimberley reefs, but not about them being ordinary.

Known to survive at a depth of 60 metres in clear oceanic waters, Dr. Wilson has found Talbot Bay corals as deep as 20 metres in turbid, muddy conditions.

Dr. Wilson says non-Indigenous scientists would not normally look for corals in locations such as Turtle Reef.

The water is very far from clear and oceanicits turbid and the light doesnt penetrate far. Its not the sort of environment [conventional] corals require, yet weve got this prolific growth of corals, he says

This is in a land-locked gulf, youve really got to navigate your way in and you will have [difficulty] getting out if you dont know your way.

As a consequence the current flows away and you get whirlpools in the ocean, he says.

The clarity of the water is affected by this large inter-tidal flow thus the discovery of corals in this environment is a surprise.

About 70 per cent of the Talbot Bay corals appear to be common to Queenslands Barrier Reef.

Dr. Wilson suspects the remaining 30 per cent will be found in Indonesias Maluku province, because of its proximity to Australia. He says the discovery turns conventional thought about coral on its head.

This is the sort of information which some people will find difficult to believe because they have all been taught that corals all need clear oceanic water and its not true, he says.

The original article 'Reconnaissance of species-rich coral reefs in a muddy, macro-tidal, enclosed embayment,  Talbot Bay, Kimberley, Western Australia' has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia issue 94.

Related Stories

Finally, some good news about the prospects of coral reefs in the age of climate change. According to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, corals may actually survive rising ocean temperatures in ‘tough love’ ...

Coral ecosystems cope much better than was first thought when the reef habitat is fragmented, a new study has found, meaning that efforts to restore even small parts of the damaged Great Barrier Reef could reap great rewards.

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, second only to tropical rain forests. Bird's nest coral (Seriatopora hystrix) is common throughout the Indo-Pacific and is able to live across a range of depths. ...

Recommended for you

At the end of the Pleistocene period, approximately 12,800 years ago—give or take a few centuries—a cosmic impact triggered an abrupt cooling episode that earth scientists refer to as the Younger Dryas.

In a new assessment of nine state-of-the-art climate model simulations provided by major international modeling centers, Michael Rawlins at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues found broad disagreement in ...

New research confirms that the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and projects that Washington, D.C., could drop by six or more inches in the next century—adding to the problems of sea-level rise.

The world's deserts may be storing some of the climate-changing carbon dioxide emitted by human activities, a new study suggests. Massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold more carbon than all the plants on land, according ...

Wildfires in California's fabled Sierra Nevada mountain range are increasingly burning high-elevation forests, which historically have seldom burned, reports a team of researchers led by the John Muir Institute of the Environment ...

Oliver Manuel's recent efforts to plaster Physorg.com and other public news sites with his theories and personal URLs are a bit puzzling, as scientists have a variety of publications available to communicate directly to each other in. My best guess is that he is desperately trying to prop up his legacy in light of his arrest in his university office on 7 charges of rape and sodomy based on allegations by 4 of his own children. The charges have been reduced to one count of felony attempted sodomy, not necessarily because of his innocence, but because of the statute of limitations. One can only guess how the recent charges and decades of family strife have affected his ability to reason rationally and to remain objective while defending his unpopular theories.http://www.homefa...uel.htmlhttp://mominer.ms...hildren/